Some leadership transitions involve bringing new executives into the organization. Some involve moving up to new positions within the firm and others occur when executives leave to seek new career opportunities or begin retirement.
Leadership transitions get riskier the higher up the organization they occur: up to 40% of new CEOs fail to meet their objectives in the first 18 months according to the Center for Creative Leadership. The cost of failure is high. Michael Watkins in his book, The First 90 Days, estimates the cost of a single failed hire range from 14 to 28 times the base compensation with the higher figure reflecting more senior hires.
Successful leadership transitions get results more quickly and result in richer and deeper alignment with the organization. They are the result of guidance from outside executive coaches that cover not just how to meet the discrete requirements of the job, but how to build and maintain networks, as well as influence senior management or external authorities.
Leadership transitions that promise to deliver dramatically increased value, primarily through people, are not easy to execute.
Transitions are times of heightened emotion where perceptions and feelings outweigh logic. Leaders know and science has discovered emotionality's deeper purpose: the timeworn mechanisms of emotion allow two human beings to receive the contents of each other's minds. Emotion is the messenger of love; it is the vehicle that carries every signal from one brimming heart to another. Leaders in new positions who fail to recognize the impact of emotions in their future success are sure to fail.